BERLIN (Dispatches) - Germany has formally recognized crimes committed by its colonial troops at the beginning of the 20th century against Namibian people as genocide.
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in a statement Friday that as a “gesture of recognition of the immeasurable suffering”, Germany would fund projects worth 1.1 billion euros over 30 years in Namibia.
The aim is to compensate the southern African nation for the role Germany played in committing genocide and property seizures in its-then colony more than a century ago, he said.
Maas said the alleged reconciliation came after more than half a decade of efforts. It includes naming the events of the German colonial period in particular the atrocities in the period from 1904 to 1908 “without sparing or glossing over.”
“We will now, also in an official capacity, call these events what they were from today’s perspective — a genocide,” Maas said even though he did not offer an apology.
Namibian President Hage Geingob’s spokesman Alfredo Hengari welcomed the move.
“The acceptance on the part of Germany that the genocide was committed is the first step in the right direction,” he said.
Thousands of Herero and Nama tribes were massacred by German colonial forces between 1904 and 1908, after the local population waged an uprising against German rule in the colony, then named German South West Africa.
Survivors were then forced into the desert, where many ended up in brutal concentration camps and used as slave labor while many perished from cold, malnutrition and exhaustion.
Berlin last week categorically ruled out financial reparations forming part of a planned formal apology to Namibia for Germany’s colonial atrocities amid fears such payments could set a legal precedent for further claims.
Angela Merkel’s government has since 2014 negotiated with Namibia to “heal the wounds” of what historians call the first genocide of the 20th century.
Berlin in 2018 returned skulls and other remains of massacred tribes people that were used in the colonial-era experiments to proclaim racial superiority of Europeans.
Macron Admits French
‘Responsibilities’ in Genocide

And also, French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged France’s “responsibilities” in the 1994 Rwanda genocide while denying France was an “accomplice” in the events that left 800,000 people dead, in a bid to end years of strained relations.
“As I stand with you today, with humility and respect, I recognize the magnitude of our responsibilities,” Macron said Thursday in Kigali, where he’s meeting with Rwandan President Paul Kagame. France is recognizing “the suffering it has inflicted on the Rwandan people by allowing silence to prevail for too long.”